Category Archives: In the Spotlight

I have recently attended a talk by Harvard Professor Sheila Jasanoff at Bar Ilan University’s STS Program. Jasanoff is one of the founding members of the field of STS (which stands for “Science and Technology Studies” or “Science Technology & Society ” aka “Science Studies” and “Social Studies of Science” – which tells you something about its fragmented history). She talked about the history of STS and her vision of its future.

Jasanoff’s talk was partly a response to a recent attack on STS by historian of science Professor Lorraine Daston¹ on behalf of the older sister discipline of history of science. Daston has argued that while both STS and history of science drew the lesson that science is social from Thomas Kuhn’s influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), they have interpreted it differently. Historians of science (cultural historians, to be precise, who for Daston are the most dominant today) have interpreted “social” as “historically situated in a particular culture”. They drew the right lesson which is that science should be studied in its historical context without historians’ imposing their present knowledge back on the past. By contrast, STS scholars interpreted “social” as “political”, and drew the wrong lesson that science should be studied like politics. Consequently, STS scholars have been applying general political or quasi-political theoretical frameworks to different case studies from science. These frameworks presuppose that science is basically the same in different periods, and hence can be analyzed in the same terms. By doing that, STS scholars have abandoned the study of what science is, or so Daston argues.

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Most would agree that the history of science and science policy are somehow linked: the various incarnations of history of science as a field of study aim to uncover “how science works”, be it through a “traditional” focus on a more or less linear intellectual progression, through the lens of its relationship with a broader social and political sphere, or by looking at its deeper social interactions between scientists. In this sense, I’m convinced that almost any historian of science—especially those operating in the context of having to “justify” the impact of their work—would recognize, on some level, important connections between the knowledge they produce and science policy. One could even argue that the raison d’être of modern science policy lies in the realization that science itself does not operate as an isolated endeavour—it’s too important to be run only by practicing scientists. But can we say something more specific about what ties the history of science and science policy in the making? I hope to put forth a few partial suggestions to help answer this question or, at the very least, provide some food for thought.

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In our post-Kuhnian times as philosophers and historians of science, it is important to remember that interests besides the holy, disinterested pursuit of Truth, Progress and Knowledge affect the development of scientific thought and practice. There is now a blossoming field of study devoted to understanding how scientific communities, personal and social values, and similar human concerns shape scientific developments. Recently, some people have taken another, quite pressing, (possibly?) nonscientific concern that affects the development of science: money.

This post is inspired by a group of people who are doing what might be called the Philosophy of the Business of Science: they are investigating the practicalities of funding and grant processing using philosophical tools for the purpose of trying to figure out how these aspects of the scientific endeavor shape changes in the landscape of science, and whether there are better systems that could, if implemented, improve this landscape. I had a chance to see a symposium on peer review in the sciences put on by a group of these people at the 2010 Philosophy of Science Association (PSA) biennial meeting in Montreal last weekend, and I want to share some of what I learned there with you. I also want to tell you a little bit about another pair of philosophers whose project is aimed more directly at funding structures in the sciences. But before I get into the gory details, let me orient you to the problems at hand.

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This past weekend, November 4-7, Montreal was host to the annual meetings of the History of Science Society (HSS) and the Philosophy of Science Association (PSA). Many of us at The Bubble Chamber attended and presented our own work. Over the next couple of weeks we plan to offer reports and reflections on some of the sessions we attended. Starting things off, here is a report from a session on a topic that should be of particular interest to Bubble Chamber readers: “The Philosophy of Commercialized Science”. I’m not going to offer any commentary right now, but I think there’s still a lot of interesting information here!

Sergio Sismondo – Corporate Interests and Medical Science

Sergio Sismondo started off the session by telling us about the practice of ghost writing pharmaceutical studies. Most of us have probably heard that pharmaceutical companies often perform their own internal studies and pass off those studies to academics for “editing”, leading to the appearance that the study was independently conducted. Most of us have probably also heard that there is a huge bias in the published literature towards research findings favorable to pharmaceutical companies, and that that bias disappears when not counting studies sponsored by those companies. However, the details Sismondo presented were fascinating.

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Astronomers recently discovered an Earth-like planet, orbiting a Sun-like star, at an Earth-like distance, only 20 light years away. ¹  The lead scientist in this project, Steven Vogt, has gone so far as to state that he is basically “100% certain” about the existence of life on the newly discovered world, a bet placed primarily on the planet’s distance from its sun.²  The only inhospitable-sounding part of most descriptions is the planet’s catalog-derived name – Gliese 581 g.

The subsequent public uptake of this discovery, for example by NBC’s Brian Williams, has gotten many people rightly concerned about the social consequences of generating hype about this astronomical discovery.  After reporting on this astronomical discovery during the nightly news, Williams finished his report by stating, “It’s just nice to know that if we screw this place up badly enough there is some place we can all go.”  David McConville, a science educator, responded with an avatar-based video, arguing that statements like Williams’s are routinely used to “subconsciously justify the continued destruction of our planetary ecosystems,” and that he should therefore retract his insinuation that Gliese 581 g could serve as a “back-up” Earth.  It’s not at all clear that he’s wrong about that.

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